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I deeply regret posting this article. Somehow I thought it was interesting and in tune with many other articles we've discussed this week but seeing what happen
by kawera 11y ago
I deeply regret posting this article. Somehow I thought it was interesting and in tune with many other articles we've discussed this week but seeing what happened here, oh my... I'm really sorry, won't happen again.
- tptacek 11y agoIf you're not one of the people who makes it their mission to post political stories to the front page --- and those people definitely exist --- then never apologize for submitting things. It's the disproportionate upvotes that are the problem.
- kawera 11y agoI never post or comment in political stories, only tech, saas and related stuff. Paris is my second home I guess I got carried out and ended up posting this story, oh well.
- dang 11y agoFWIW, the story has fallen off the front page because (a) users flagged it and (b) moderators have downweighted it, as we typically do when a story is either a piler-on or a riler-upper or both.
- tptacek 11y agoUnfortunately, by the time the admins notice that there's a riler- upper - piler- onner, a lot of the damage is done. Look at how many points and comments this story has.
- kawera 11y agoBy the time I noticed what happened it was too late and the "delete" menu had disappeared. I didn't post it to accumulate points and certainly wouldn't mind if they were subtracted from my account.
- tptacek 11y agoNot your fault! Stop worrying about it! Post more things! I thought the article was interesting too. I just don't like what HN did with it.
- dang 11y agoI'm not persuaded that it would work to control it more tightly than that. It's always been the way HN works that these things surge up and then get flagged or weighted down. There's a kind of equilibrium in there that we're loth to mess with; asking for too much would be a mistake. This concern is perennial. I recall having the same debate many times with you and davidw years before I ever worked on HN. And I am happy to report that my view has shifted a lot closer to the two of yours since then! But is there reason to believe this has deteriorated recently? An external provocation (ISIS and Paris attacks) has certainly spiked, as happens quarterly or so, but I don't see that the HN-community-system is markedly different.
- tptacek 11y agoIf you had a daily snapshot of the front page of HN at 3:00PM PST from 2011 to today, I think you'd see approximately the same number of political stories. The difference is that the stories you'd see today are more focused: where before you'd see the occasional Ron Paul story, or something about Israel, or something about the banksters, today you're almost certainly going to see a police misconduct or asset forfeiture story. What there should be is a clearer guideline. "Don't post stories about politics or religion".
- kawera 11y agoDaniel, is it possible to subtract those points from my account? I didn't post it for upvotes.
- dang 11y agoNo because it's compensation for any good things you posted that got ignored. Like tptacek said, just post more good things! You didn't do anything wrong btw. HN reacts how it reacts. Having a wide range of stimuli is important; a few lead to madness, but it wears off. The thing to optimize for is story diversity, because that's what serves the site goal of intellectual curiosity. If you (or anyone) really want to up your game of contributing to HN, scour the Internet for out-of-the-way things that readers here haven't heard of and will get all perky and curious in response to. Those are the best posts and there are never enough of them.
- kawera 11y agoThanks, will do!